


Inkblot Octopi

by OahuPuppy



Series: Aquarium [2]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Author Is Sleep Deprived, Connor (Detroit: Become Human) Has Feelings, Connor (Detroit: Become Human) Needs a Hug, Depression, For Me, Gen, Mentioned Hank Anderson, Panic, Russian Roulette, Suicidal Thoughts, he just doesn't understand them, read the summary it's important, references to death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-16
Updated: 2019-03-16
Packaged: 2019-11-19 09:25:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18133943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OahuPuppy/pseuds/OahuPuppy
Summary: Hank shouts, and rages, and a picture of a child shatters on the linoleum as a table rocks, a chair falls, a man stands. A gun, confiscated, bullet hastily removed from the chamber, rests heavy in Connor’s hands. Hank tears a cabinet door nearly off its hinges and rips a new bottle of Black from its depths, slamming the door to a chorus of unknown future catastrophe within the cabinet. Connor watches him scream and rip the cap off and pour poison down his throat like a faucet spouting straight down a drain as the man, seething, possessed, thunders to his room and slams the door. Connor looks down at the gun in his hands. He made a mistake, a miscalculation, an error somewhere. He replaces it in its drawer. He doesn’t think about the bullet in his pocket. Never. He crouches and slips the picture free from the broken frame, leaving the pile of shattered glass. He lays it on the table. Cole stares at him with eyes that were so bright, so beautiful, so alive. He is numb. He walks to the couch, lays down, and sleeps.





	Inkblot Octopi

**Author's Note:**

> uh if y’all could help me tag this that would be swell, cuz a fella don’t know what the hell this feelin is and ain’t got a clue what to tag for it. anyway, I hope y’all like it, it’s veryyyy. honest. and venty. I put my best guess in the tags but idk guys.

He blinks open his eyes at 7:30:00 AM exactly and feels _wrong_. The hand resting on his chest clenches in his shirt as his chest tightens, compresses, his ribs are a birdcage bowing and bending in under the strain of elastic bands and his heart flutters against the bars and his chest fills with dark hot hurt and his stomach _rolls_. He feels _wrong_ , but he doesn’t know _what's_ wrong, but he wants to find out and he wants it to stop he wants it to stop _he wants it to STOP_.

_go away._

The feeling lingers. It is rooted in the core of his being in the bleary light of dawn melting into the room through grimy, frosted, shuttered windows. He swings his legs off the couch and plants his feet on ground that sends magnetized pins and needles up to his knees through their soles. His legs feel numb and taught and his every joint aches with causeless strain. He pushes himself up to standing. 

As if affected by gravity, the writhing feeling in his core becomes the heavy weight of stones pulling him down. He is wearing clothes but he may as well be wearing nothing at all because he feels bare and his skin feels as though wispy fingers of ice trail across it and he doesn’t want to turn around, doesn’t want to look into the open, empty house that gapes wide and infinitely unknown at his back. His fingers tap repeatedly against his palms like he’s trying to clap one-handed at the show this hot heavy freezing mass of turmoil is spinning in his chest, encore, _encore_ , making his heart beat like a track horse run to the edge of death by an unseen jockey latched to his soul. His shoulders hurt and he feels too big for the room and he feels too small for his body and he wants to hide under the couch and never come out. 

He turns to face the room.

The feeling in his stomach twists, a curved blade sunk to its hilt shredding his most sensitive insides and he is helpless to it, his heart thunders, he doesn’t know, he doesn’t _know_ , and he wants to cry but he doesn’t know _why_ and there are tears in his eyes and nails scrabbling at his sternum and he can’t see past the sheen of saline that won’t drip away or blink clear and he doesn’t _know_.

He lifts a leg weighted by chains waiting to drag him into the earth and takes one step around the couch. He needs to go to the kitchen. He needs to feed Sumo. And start the coffee maker. And check the weather. And take the dog for a walk, and make sure Hank is ready on time, and drive to work if he still has a hangover, and work on his cases, and deal with Reed, and deal with suspects, and deal with evidence, and deal with humans, and deal with Androids, and talk to Markus, and talk to Fowler, and talk to people, and buy groceries, and buy clothes, and buy thirium, and find a phone, and find a coin, and find a suspect, and find a lost piece of evidence, and find a place to eat lunch, and find the right radio station, and find some way to start a conversation, and pretend to be normal, and pretend to be adjusting well, and pretend to be okay speaking with anti-Android witnesses and keep Hank safe and keep Androids safe and keep suspects safe and keep and find and talk and fake and buy and drive and walk and go and work and make and do and deal and say and tell and hear and know and feel and be and and and and and-

He needs to step around the couch. He just needs to step around the couch. Three steps now. 

Two steps. 

One. 

He is frozen at the threshold of the kitchen. He cannot cross from wood to tile.

It is as though the red wall has returned, unseen this time, blocking his path and forcing him to be still. His limbs are lead and his head is a whirlwind of feelings and uncertainty and fear that funnels down his throat into his chest and feeds the beast that grows there where he can’t see it. 

He swallows.

And steps into the kitchen. 

The sun peeks through the blinds in a single ray, the beam passing over his eyes as he moves through air thick as swamp mud and just as resistant to his will to reach the far corner of the kitchen. It does not warm him. He pushes through it. It burns his skin like ice. He blinks. He looks down. 

He stands over Sumo’s bowl. 

He crouches — unlocks his knees and lets the stone in his chest cavity send him quickly to the floor — and scoops a serving into the bowl. 

Sumo lumbers up beside him and digs in and he buries his face in the dog’s side. One hand remains fisted in his shirt. The other strokes down the dog’s back, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. He raises his head, blinks, and stands. 

His chest hurts. His stomach aches. His joints feel disconnected. His head feels tight and pained. But everything is less, now. The feeling drains down through his torso, pools in his hips, seeps down his legs, leaks out into the earth through his feet. His heartbeat is a whisper beneath his skin.

He feels numb. His skin is cold. His chest holds a void where the hot hurt has abandoned him for now, but it will come back at some point. He doesn’t know when. He doesn’t want to know. 

He wishes he felt numb. So he couldn’t feel- this. So he wouldn’t feel- unwelcome. His eye catches on the shards of glass on the floor, the empty metal frame. He should clean up the glass, but. He is. Unwelcome. He turns away. 

He starts the coffee maker. He checks the weather. He pulls on a beanie and a jacket, supple leather that crinkles and smells of old house and candlelight and November, and the wet wad of washed dollar bill he found in the top pocket with a soaked cigarette butt and ash. He finds Sumo’s leash and doggie bags by the door. He finds his keys and pockets them, beside the lonely bullet. He finds his head and twists it back onto his shoulders. He leashes up the patient Saint Bernard and steps out into the cold morning sun. The door swings shut behind him. The house is silent. 

It is 7:44:39 AM.

**Author's Note:**

> Woke up feeling like this and don’t know what it is tbh, so I wrote it out, cuz what else can you do really? I’m gonna go for a walk now :P
> 
> Also! I promise this is the last story about fuckinnnnn *Depression* before my Big Boy story comes out. It is as of now just under 12k words and I still have some scenes to write. It is definitely not as sad as Fishbowl or this here Inkblot Octopi. Prepare.


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